The Red Book Magazine/Volume 39/Number 6/Yacobson

by Stephen Vincent Benét

 

He is well worth knowing, is Yacobson,
and you will rejoice in the elemental
fury which enabled him to save Sally
Divine.... A remarkable story by
one of the younger writers whose work
has of late attracted much attention.

Yacobson

By

Stephen Vincent Benét

 

YACOBSON should never have been a waiter. His hands were so big that seeing them fumble with spoons and cups was like watching a steam shovel try to pick up rice-grains; and his feet were so big they tripped him whenever he hurried; and his chest and legs were so big they bulged out of the biggest dress-suit they could find him as if they had tried to put him back into short-clothes. But the union had called a sudden strike the previous evening, just before dinner-time—a strike that swept even the kitchen and dining-room of the Ritz-Plaza bare; and worried assistant-managers were running around with napkins over their arms, incredibly meek of speech but praying voicelessly and continuously for anything that could carry a tray two feet without spilling it, to stop the gap till the union and the hotel-men's association could come to terms. So Yacobson, after three hours' confused intensive training in service-wagons and finger-bowls, attained in a day what should be the godlike dream of all good waiters—full charge of two tables in the Lucrezia Borgia Room of the Ritz-Plaza Hotel.

The papers had played up the strike in their reddest ink, and even at half-past seven the room held only a scattering of clients—which was fortunate for Yacobson. And the first of his tables was taken by a red-faced old gentleman so interested in market-reports that the only things he noticed about his food were its arrival and departure—which was still more fortunate. For Yacobson, in spite of his three hours' drill and some beautifully contradictory instructions by a frantic sub-superintendent, still understood very little of what he was about. Perhaps he was hampered by his imperfect command of English, which hardly extended as yet beyond “Yas,” “No,” and the names of the commoner edibles in a one-armed lunch. Indeed, if he had been able to read Dr. Eliot's Five-foot Shelf, it is doubtful whether he would ever have sought for his present grandeur, even; for Yacobson at home was a firm if inarticulate member of the Danish Socialist Party and thoroughly approved of the principle of strikes. Still, a week or so of picking up an existence from soup-kitchens and bread-lines can change political opinions with magic ease. In Yacobson they had developed a hunger almost larger than Yacobson.

Then this job had come—and a meal before he actually went to work! Not a real meal for such as Yacobson, but still a meal. At present Yacobson's mental horizon was bounded only by the conviction that as long as he kept the job, there would be meals.

The red-faced gentleman dug an absent spoon into his ice-cream. Yacobson, eying him wolfishly from afar, grinned suddenly. This was pretty easy, after all, this being a swell waiter, except for the stiff shirt and collar. They pinched; and his sleeves were too short—he tried to pull one of them farther down with his paw till a noise of ripping cloth arrested him. The white coat he used to wear in the Busy Beaver Lunch was a lot sweller, really. They fed you better there too—they gave you enough. He sighed regretfully. Still, he hadn't broken anything here, so far. And at the end of the week when he got his pay, he could go somewhere and really eat.

The red-faced gentleman wanted coffee. Yacobson brought it—a big cup, lukewarm and half of it in the saucer, an honor it shared for a time with Yacobson's thumb. But Consolidated Toothpicks had closed at 92, and the red-faced gentleman didn't notice. Yacobson turned away—and saw the party.

IT was eight o'clock. The room had filled up a little, front and center—Yacobson's tables were near the wall toward the pantry-doors. The party moved toward them—a party in evening clothes, three men, two women, shepherded by the assistant manager. He tried to put them near the center of the room; there was a pause for an instant—something that looked like argument—a woman's voice, pleasantly imperious: “No—I want the quiet table—that nice one over by the wall with the oversize waiter.” The assistant manager shrugged his shoulders, giving in to Fate. Then they were seating themselves at Yacobson's table.

The assistant manager, whispering, obsequious: “I hope—allowances—everything somewhat confused—new men—I hope another waiter perhaps—not very experienced—”

“Oh, no!” And the vision in the shimmer-gold dress—she was really almost as beautiful as a girl in a facial-soap advertisement, honestly she was; even Yacobson's slow-moving mind had already described her as “good-looker, Ay say!” and you can see for yourself what mere allusion to her has done to this sentence. The vision, to get a fresh start, looked straight at Yacobson “This seems a very nice one—I like his large hands,” she remarked in a voice that was pleasanter than rustling green-backs. “Thank you so much.”

THE sub-manager retired, wagging himself politely, but managing somehow to take Yacobson along. Yacobson caught phrases shot at him with extreme swiftness out of the corner of the sub-manager's mouth.

“Very important clients—don't be rattled—understand? See they get all the service there is—big tip for you. For God's sake” (almost whining) “—for God's sake don't pull any bonehead plays! Wake up!”

Yacobson looked down at the fawning little person coldly, from his full height. As if anything in the world could rattle Yacobson!

“Ay get you, boss!” said Yacobson, and went back to his table.

As he dealt menu-cards about with the generous gesture of one pitching horseshoes, Yacobson began to take in the component elements of his party:

A sallowish girl with a luscious mouth, overpainted and powdered, in a dress that seemed to consist of two black straps; a prosperous-looking man of the pink, piggy, well-barbered type that has its stubby hands elaborately manicured, wears too many rings, tips heavily and curses at servants; a negligible man whose tortoise-shell glasses and neat hair said “private secretary;” a thin young man, athletically handsome without prettiness, jade shirt-studs or the more obvious actor's mannerisms—“good faller in scrap, that boy,” decided Yacobson; the vision. The Vision!

“Well, well, well,” the piggy man announced, “what are all the boyses and girlies having tonight?”

He looked around the table for approval, instinctively—he was jovial, one felt, the sort of all-around jolly good fellow who treated every one of his own remarks as a jest of the first water.

“Soup or oysters, sister?” He beamed at the sallowish girl “There's potadge à la rain and consommy—guess that's à la beef estract, hey? And—” Oh, dear, how merry he was, and how the rest of the party smiled at him! But suddenly he seemed to grow perturbed; he scowled, almost. “Waiter!” And this time, almost he snapped his fingers!

Yacobson should have sprung to attention at once. But a thought had come to Yacobson, and thoughts with him took much time and complete attention. He was looking at the Vision and saying something over and over in his mind to make it stick. He was almost saying it aloud in a thunderous whisper. “My Gawd,” he was almost saying, “that little girl ban Sally Divine!” And his mouth dropped open. For the movies held a place second only to eats in Yacobson's cosmos—and Peerless Films, presenting Sally Divine, have gone around the world in places that have never seen a cocktail or a safety-razor.

“Waiter!” said the piggy man again in the voice of the jolly fellow whom circumstances are always forcing to be unpleasant to others.

This time Yacobson heard. “Yas,” he said, and came forward an order-pad clutched tightly in one paw.

“Two bluepoint cocktails, one pottadge, one lobster bisque, one grapefruit,” the piggy man commanded, “an' the bluepoints gotta be cold this time—get that? Then—le's see—I'll have a small planked steak—and the filly mignon for you, sister, and two lamb chops Parisian for the lady across. —You, Charley? —Better make it three planked steaks—no, I'll have filly mignon after all—and some of the fresh asparagus would be good, an—”

“Ay don't get all that,” said Yacobson, scrawling with painful haste.

“Well, you oughta—I'm here for dinner, not to teach you how to speak English—get it? Oh, yes, Sally, but we're paying enough here, and I want a little service for my money. Got it now?”

“Ay got the soup and oysters now,” said Yacobson.

The piggy man's voice ascended—a broken wail.

“Great Henry, have I gotta say it all over again? Oh, all right—but of all the dumb Alfreds! All right—two planked steaks, small, no, better make it three after all, I guess—”

If anybody had had time to listen to unnecessary noises in the pantry, they might have heard Yacobson mutter as he filled his orders. The “mutter” is used in that figurative sense in which one might comment upon a steam siren's whisper. Also the mutter alternated; it was first, in tones that meant gentleness with Yacobson: “She ban sveet, that Sally girl. Better looker than her pictures. She ban all right.” Then growlingly: “Ay speak English all right. Ay know ay speak English good—just so good as he do—damn him!”

He was still absorbed in deliberate and painful thought as he went back to his table—so absorbed that the piggy man found his oysters sans cocktail-sauce, which led to further witty reproach from the piggy man. Slow, flat-footed, hulking, exaggeratedly cautious with such tiny things as soup-spoons, Yacobson managed to get past the salad course with only those minor mistakes which a less searching eye than that of the piggy man might well have overlooked. And doing so, a large, unhasty wrath began to smolder in Yacobson like a fire made of peat. His passages to and from the service-doors were to windy grumblings: “What for she married that svellhead fatty, what for?.... She run off with that young boy with the clean-washed face some time —Ay hope she do, by damn!”

And then the disaster came, like a bolt from the blue, like a snake in the grass, like a pitcher's home run, like any other simile that suggests both speed and unexpectedness. The piggy Divine, widely gesturing to the fervid young lady, gymnastically explanatory; the Yacobson approachant from the wrong side with a chocolate parfait. Bing!—and the piggy man was rubbing bruised knuckles, the fervid young lady squealing as half a parfait slid from her lap to her shoes, glass on the floor, confusion, sub-manager coming on the run, all occupants of the table talking at once. In the midst of this riot was only one calm person, Yacobson, on his knees, picking bits of glass from the floor with clumsy but unhurried fingers.

“Oh, my dress,” sobbed the fervid young lady, “my dress!”—and would not be comforted.

“Here, you!” bawled the piggy man, raging. “You fish! You clumsy, ignorant fool of a saphead Swede!” Then, as Yacobson continued to pick up glass, he turned to the sub-manager. He was trembling with excitement; his voice cracked with the injustice of a world that allowed things like this to happen at dinner.

“I want this man fired! He delib—he deliberately spilled ice-cream on Miss de Serum's dress and rooned it!” His excitement was so great that he nearly said “ruint.”

The sub-manager turned primly to Yacobson.

“You're fired,” he said. “Inexcusable. Get out!”

Yacobson arose. His face expressed neither joy nor sorrow Only he let the pieces of broken glass he had collected tinkle back to the floor.

“All right.” said Yacobson, and turned to walk away.

But here Sally Divine created astonishing diversion.

She had said nothing at all since the accident happened, except the expected feminine croonings to the fervid young lady: but her cheeks had been getting pinker and pinker, and her blue eyes cooler and cooler, all through her husband's speech. Now she spoke, and her voice was chilly as liquid air.

“I wont have you fire that man, Frank!” said Sally Divine

“What?” said the piggy man; and again, astoundedly “Wha-a-at?”

“I said I wouldn't have you fire that man, and I wont!” She breathed sharply; her lips paled, reddened again. “You knocked that dish into Josie's lap yourself. It was your fault and your clumsiness, and you're not going to put it off on anyone else, Frank Richards, not while I'm here. It's mean!”

THE fat man rose to his feet. The veins stood out on his forehead.

“That man—” he began.

“Sit down!” said Sally Divine from her chilly quietude, and the piggy man sat. Then she turned to the sub-manager

“So he isn't fired;” she said briefly. The sub-manager made a rapid decision. He beckoned to Yacobson.

“At the special request of one of our most valued clients—” he began very smoothly—then gave it up in despair.

“You're not fired—yet,” he announced.

“All right,” said Yacobson.

“Now go and thank the lady!” The sub-manager prompted his large, unruly child.

Yacobson advanced upon Sally like a mountain, halted.

“Thanks, lady,” he said. “They fire me tomorrow all the same. but Ay don't care. Ay seen you lots in the pictures,” he added graciously. “Ay liked those pictures. Thanks.”

There never was a goddess, from Sekhet down, who wouldn't respond to the brave-Newfoundland-dog look in the eyes of a properly muscle-bound hero. Sally Divine turned back to the sub-manager indignantly.

“Is that straight? You're going to fire him anyhow?”

The sub-manager hesitated—hemmed.

“Not tomorrow, perhaps. But ordinarily he would never have been taken on. And with our standard of service, we could hardly—”

“Oh,” said Sally Divine. “Yes, I see. I quite understand.”

But wholly without sarcasm! Instead she suddenly turned on the sub-manager the appealing innocent eyes that had made all America snuffle in “Whose Husband Are You?”

“But can't you do something for him?” breathed Sally piteously.

The sub-manager staggered, very nearly, as the eyes had their full effect. There was pleading in those eyes—and in the fact that their owner occupied the Michelangelo Suite; and somewhere before the sub-manager's dazzled vision flashed like “In Hoc Signo Vinces,” the Ritz-Plaza's celebrated motto: “Always Get the Guest What He Asks for—No Matter If It's the Moon.”

“Oh, couldn't you, please?” said Sally Divine; and then: “Surely you—”

The sub-manager smiled like a sheep attempting tact.

“I'm afraid we can hardly keep him as a waiter,” he said, with what he hoped was firmness, “but I could probably find—”

The goddess beckoned to Yacobson

“What else can you do besides wait on table?” she said. “Mr.—” She hesitated. “Mr.—”

“Yacobson,” said Yacobson

“Mr. Jacobson,” said Sally Divine, and completed her conquest. Yacobson grinned till his face was a pumpkin-lantern. He spread out his hands in front of her, his huge hands.

“Ay can rub,” he said, and paused. Then, as she did not seem to understand:

“Rub peoples,” he added. His fingers played galloping horses on an imaginary back.

“Oh, of course!” said Sally Divine. If she had been before the camera, she would have clapped her hands. “He can be a masseur in the Turkish bath!”

“I'm afraid—” said the sub-manager weakly. Then he wilted. “I will make inquiries if there is a vacancy. If so—” he ended.

“And I will make inquiries if Mr. Jacobson has filled the vacancy—sometime next week,” said Sally Divine, and this time her eyes, as she saw the sub-manager, went strangely cold again.

“I'm such a cat—I only stay where I'm humored,” she said, and turned back to her company and the piggy man, who had been trying to cover up his recent collapse by overofficious use of a napkin on Sister's dress.

The sub-manager saw his opportunity, summoned Yacobson away. But Yacobson lingered.

“Thanks,” he said again, loudly.

She smiled, once, swiftly. Already she was beginning to forget the whole incident.

“Isn't anything. Glad you liked the pictures,” she said, her increasing forgetfulness making her voice very friendly.

Going back to his boarding-house that night, Yacobson was reasoned with by strikers as to the relative merits of open shops and closed. The argument became quite heated—so heated that Yacobson was forced to crack two argumentative heads against each other in order to proceed on his way. But he did it almost abstractedly, with no fine joy in conflict. He was thinking: “She ban damn' good to me. She ban damn' white,” he was thinking. “She ban like that clean boy—they look at each other that way.” He was thinking: “That svellhead fatty —Ay like to tear him apart.” And people like Yacobson are dangerous when they think

YACOBSON did not wax fat—his muscles would not let him; but in the steamy orchid-house atmosphere of the Ritz-Plaza's Turkish bath he thrived exceedingly. It impressed him as being the only place he had ever struck, except a stokehold, that was properly warm. Besides, for once in his life he ranked as expert—his bear-paws had magic sinews in them; they loosened refractory muscles and smoothed out soreness with the delicate tactile sense of an A-1 safeblower's fingers solving the combination of an 1830 “cheesebox.” There were tips—more tips; there began to be regular customers; the sock where he kept his money grew bulgy and chinky. And whenever not eating or working or sleeping, he went to the movies.

The films that he favored featured Sally Divine, and as novelty in films meant nothing to Yacobson, he often saw the same film eight or ten times. Miss Divine, in the flesh, he did not see again. However, he gathered that she was still at the Ritz-Plaza; at least, her piggy husband paid frequent visits to the Turkish bath, and as he took these baths for one of two purposes, either to sober up or as a substitute for exercise, his visits were frequent.

On these visits, moreover, he always called for Yacobson, from some antic delight the loud and stupid take in annoying, mosquito-wise, any thing or person that seems to be stronger and less talkative than they. He was always merry with Yacobson, very merry indeed. He would lie on his marble slab, a wheezing pink sloppy bulk that Yacobson spanked and punched and twisted silently, talking to Yacobson of Yacobson, of the clumsiness of Yacobson, the boobishness, the utter turnip-faced stupidity of all Yacobsons in general and Yacobson in particular. Between involuntary grunts, as Yacobson slapped him, he would gasp out smoking-car sagas of the astounding innocence of Swedes in many practical matters.

It amused him—we must be charitable with other people's amusements. Perhaps, also, he was waiting for the day when Yacobson would answer back. But Yacobson only rubbed and whacked and said, “Yas,” and “No,” and “Ay don' know”—a contemptuous hugeness whose hands could have taken the piggy man to pieces like a cheap alarm-clock. And next day or the day after, the piggy man would return, and the process and the indictment of Yacobsons would be repeated, the length of the performance depending on the piggy man's alcoholic pressure at the moment.

The next four months brought no spectacular events at all—unless Yacobson's purchase of a film magazine an extraction therefrom of a rotogravure portrait of Sally Divine as Little Nell to pin on his wall may be called an event. Any other changes that took place were solely in the mind of Yacobson.

The steamy indoor life was changing him, quite how he did not know. He had always been heavy and slow, and that had been well enough. Now he felt both slow and heavy—a decided difference. Also the heat, that heat he had liked so well—it could hardly be said to get on the nerves of a Yacobson, I suppose. But he liked it less; now and then it got in his mouth like a bad taste, slimy and flat. Also, his temper had been slow of combustion. Now he was more irritable—he had almost answered the piggy man once, as a particular phase of Scandinavian character came under the teasing whip of the latter's tongue. He had not answered—but parts of the massage that followed had been unnecessarily vigorous, and for the rest of the day Yacobson had, half unconsciously considered cunning ways of hurting that soft pigginess, hurting it horribly. somehow, somewhere

A VERY bad frame of mind for somebody who intends to hold his job—and nobody knew it better than Yacobson. He tried to counteract it by starting to talk to his customers and the other rubbers whenever he got a chance. It was while hearing Ike, a colleague, expound the news of the day in a slack period that Yacobson heard something that interested him extremely.

“'Big Film Star Seeks Reno Divorce,'” spelled Ike, along a headline Then more interestedly: “Say, Swedey that's one of your reg'lars; her husband is—that pink rubber porpoise that's sweatin' around here all the time.”

“Yas?” said Yacobson vaguely. “Who ban she?”

“Sally Divine, you simp! Say, I thought you said you went to the movies! It's been blowin' up for a long time all this mess—” The expert went on—under the alias of “Kinema Kiddo” he was a prominent contributor to the Answer Column of several screen magazines: “Gawd knows why she ever hooked up to this Richards goofer in the first place, but anyhow, everybody knows that she and Grant Gordon—you know; he does young college-boy stuff for Incando—well, anyhow, they're simply fried about each other, and it's a wonder she hasn't tried to break out on parole before. Anyhow, she's started now, and she'll get it, all righty. Old Richards'll take it sittin—she'll prob'ly slip him the berries.”

“Grant Gordon, who ban he?” said the unperturbed Yacobson.

“My Lordy, and it told me it was a fan! Why—” And Ike rattled off a brilliantly concise description of Gordon's face, figure and entire career—long enough for Yacobson to gather that Gordon had been the “clean-washed fallar” at the dinner-party that had changed Yacobson's job for him.

When Ike was all through, Yacobson sat silent for a moment. Then, finally: “She ditch that svellhead fatty—that ban damn' good. Ay ban damn' glad about that,” rumbled Yacobson slowly.

“So you're strong for Sally Divine, hey?” Ike grinned. “Well, I guess that's the way any judge or jury'd feel about it—say, that the boss comin?”

Shortly before Yacobson went off, the piggy man arrived, assisting a friend. Between them they managed to hold each other up. The friend, after removing the easier portions of his clothes, went to sleep on the floor and had to be put to bed, but the piggy man remained conscious though highly garrulous, and often under the impression that Yacobson was a prominent divorce-lawyer.

“I put it just straight as I can,” he moaned. “Oh,'s you, Swede! Well, I'll put it straight to you. Jus' listen.”

“Turn over!” commanded Yacobson.

The piggy man flopped peevishly over on his stomach. “Oh, hell, don't I get any peace nowhere,” he grumbled, a grumble that passed into a snore.

Yacobson paused and looked at him a moment before getting to work. He was red—he was red as catsup, with liquor and heat; and the smell of bad liquor steamed from him like dirty smoke. He was gross and flabby and soft like a half-filled hot-water bag, all over. There was no clean flesh about him. Looking at him, dispassionately, Yacobson felt a sudden impersonal desire—a desire to pick up that flabbiness and throw it away down some drainpipe proper to it, like a god getting rid of an unsuccessful world. A desire to snap pudgy arms between strong fingers, to break the weak chest like a hollow box of bone!

“Lemme tell you,” said the snore, passing back into words. “She's movie actress, my wife—grea' movie actress. But”—rising to a gurgling whine—“she's crooked, all the same. She's crooked, I tell you!”

Yacobson discovered that his hands had turned into hooks, that those hooks had sunk into the piggy man's neck—

“Hey!” said the piggy man, startledly. “Ouch! Whassat?”

The hooks became Yacobson's hands again. The red cloth that had been in front of his eyes and yet somehow part of them, disappeared. He went back to his rubbing and slapping. The piggy man continued his confidences.

NOBODY noticed anything funny about Yacobson the next few weeks except that he started buying a lot of papers every day and pestering the other rubbers to read them to him at slack times. But then what he always wanted them to read was the Sally Divine divorce-case, so most of them were willing enough. They remembered that he seemed very interested at the report that Richards, Sally's husband, was going to file a counter-suit.

The case was to come on in a week when Mr. Richards paid his last visit to the Turkish bath, “—to get one more rub-down from the king of Sweden, here, before we hop the train west,” he explained very genially to his companion. He was not in liquor but seemed highly confident and pleased about something or other—he kept poking his friend in the ribs to emphasize his utterances, and jocularly calling him “Lawyer Bill.”

The two happened to be the only ones in the hot-room at the moment—it was after three in the afternoon—except for rubbers like Yacobson, and everybody knows that all servants are blind and deaf. So the piggy man was able to give full vent to his glee.

“Got her!” he repeated. “Got her cold!” And he slapped his bare knee. “All the proofs in the world, all wool and a yard wide. She can get her divorce—she wont make another picture—not with the country all worked up about Hollywood the way it is now! Sally Divine!” he chuckled. “Oh, Di-vine Sally! Spoil his pretty films for a while, I guess. too! Oh, Sally, you—” He went off into the unprintable, ending with, “What's that?” as a sudden noise behind him made him jump.

“Ay ban sorry,” said Yacobson, looming behind him. “Ay drop this.”” He extended a hand—a flesh-brush in the hand.

The piggy one chuckled again. “You're forgiven—it isn't your fault you're a Swede,” he announced. Then he turned to his companion. “Well, Billy, we'll have another powwow on the train—I got a compartment for us on the express. Got some stuff you haven't seen yet, either. Oh—”

“Come,” said Yacobson beside him inexorably. “You've sveated enough. I rub you. It is time.”

“Oh, all right.” And the fat man rose to go. “Best rubber in New York—and the biggest dumbbell,” he said to his friend as he turned, one hand on Yacobson's arm.

“Come!” repeated Yacobson inflexibly “It is time.” His eye had the hard frozen blue of the Arctic wave.

The piggy man laughed, departed to his slab. His friend drowsed a minute, it seemed, to the sound of slappings and rubbings.

Then, “Ouch!” he heard, and “What the —” in a voice grown suddenly bleak with terror, and then a horrible sound that ended swiftly. He leaped to his feet—turned—slipped. It was there on the slab, the horror, an instant seen through light steam like some frightful statue—hands gripping a throat, a pudgy body threshing about in its death-agony, a chest being broken to pieces by treading knees like a hollow box of bone.